Anne Arundel Community College water quality kit used in Africa

Thousands of miles from its Arnold campus, a little piece of Anne Arundel Community College is being used to help the badly polluted waterways of West Africa.

A fisheries official in Liberia has been working with local environmentalists, experts from AACC and the World Bank to test for bacteria in his country's waters. He's using a kit designed - and partially supplied - by local environmental experts and biologists.

Water pollution is a major problem in Liberia, nearly 10 years after the end of a civil war that left approximately 76 percent of the population living below the poverty line, said Patrick Sayon, Liberia's coordinator for community sciences. Few sanitation services exist in many areas, leading to high levels of bacteria in Liberia's waterways.

Sayon and others are trying to monitor the waterways, warn people of the dangers and find a solution.

"The idea is to help the citizens take the responsibility for monitoring their own water quality," said Sally Horner, a professor in AACC's biology department and environmental center.

Two years ago, Magothy River Association divers Dick Carey and Carolyn Winter, who also works for the World Bank, had the idea to spread a water quality monitoring project to Africa. Carey traveled to Liberia, where he met and trained Sayon.

A $10,000 World Bank grant paid for the materials Sayon needed to monitor the water quality.

Between February and April of 2012, Sayon collected samples from waterways, strained it and captured bacteria. He put the bacteria into a medium - a food for bacteria that allows it to grow - and strapped those sample trays to his legs or belly for 24 hours at a time to keep them at body temperature.

Call it an incubator.

The process was painful, he said, but it allowed him to see the lake was full of fecal bacteria, Sayon said.

"It was very bad," he said. Sayon even tested the drinking water, which he said also contained small amounts of fecal bacteria.

After monitoring the water for three months, Sayon ran out of the medium and ended his testing. The high levels of bacteria in Liberian waterways didn't surprise him.

"I live there, so I'm used to it," he said.

Sayon was at the Arnold campus Thursday to visit with his colleagues. College officials planned to supply Sayon with more medium, along with batteries with which to operate some of his monitoring equipment. He's anxious to start monitoring his country's waterways again.

Winter said she is happy to see Sayon leading the effort in Liberia, but more work needs to be done. The government hasn't made water quality a priority, she said.